it's just another birthday, and i am fine...

#np: Just Another Birthday - Casting Crowns

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY. I turn, well sixteen(ish). I’m old enough. I have loved this birthday more than the last few birthdays because I was forced to sit down and not think about myself today. I had an exam. The paper was in the afternoon, so thankfully, there went my plans for a quiet dinner in town, granted, that’s still gonna happen like it or yes, but not today. Today was a calm day. In the past I’ve made such a fuss of the day, by evening I really didn’t know what being a year older meant. Today I came from my paper, and just sat in my room and thought. And decided to write.

This year has been about the craziest year I have had in my life ever. I suppose it gets crazier as one grows up. I’ve had days I wished could be thirty hours long, I’ve beaten deadlines in the true Kenyan fashion, at the last possible second. Why, just immediately after writing this I should set about writing this practical report for a trip we went on three weeks ago, because it is due tomorrow, and after the report read for the paper that I’m sitting for tomorrow. Like I said, najivunia kuwa Mkenya. Also I love the ease with which things get done when you’re at the now or never point. But I digress.

Within the year I have lost quite a few things I’d rather not have. I’ve lost a few people I wish I didn’t have to. I have come face to face with rock bottom, I have known what it must be like for things to get so bad sometimes death seems like a worthy reprieve. Perhaps not for me, but I know a little of what that is. My friend lost her brother because he took his own life, it was incredibly sad, also annoying, because he was fourteen and in that season suicides in Kenya were like flies, everyday in the news there were about two. And he became a statistic, just like that. 

I’m just about to finish campus, what a relief that is for me, it has been a hectic ride, it still is… Sometimes I wish someone would lend me six hours from their day, sometimes I wish I could bring back all that time I had idle in January, cause I need it now, and then some. But the Lord is faithful. I am here today because God kept me. I’m alive only because of His grace. And these are not just words; I mean alive in the literal sense of the word. Breathing.

There are just things that no one can ever teach you, there are lessons one must learn for themselves, mistakes one must make so that they can learn. There are thing only Time teaches, wounds only Time heals… I’ve learnt a few lessons this year...

I’ve learnt that being right is not nearly as important as we make it to be. And I wish I wasn’t right so many times, because when I got to be right, sometimes I lost someone I cared about, and I would sit on my bed and fume about how I was justified, but my justification wasn’t there for me when I needed a shoulder to lean on, someone was. Other times I was wrong, but I was too stubborn to make things right, so I made myself right. Some relationships actually did end, some got scarred and broken, and I’m still trying to pick up the pieces thereof, and some I don’t even know where to begin. What's that they say about starting afresh, is that even possible? Say if I broke a cup’s handle, can I just put tea in cup and tell cup let’s start afresh, you were never broken? I have to learn how to hold cup again without a handle, where to place my hands so I don’t get burnt, or maybe use cup for a different thing altogether. But I can’t say let’s start over… And so somehow I’m still trying to figure out where to start mending those relationships. Cups are easy going, people, not so much…

I have learnt to hold my head up high, no matter how beat up I really feel... Everyone's fighting battles of their own, not just me. Everyone is struggling and dealing with baggage under the weight of which I could easily suffocate. But we faint not  hold our heads up high, we make ourselves available for our friends, because maybe even if we can't solve our own, we can help them work through their baggage. Even though we can't pray for ourselves, we can cry out to God for our friends, and maybe, maybe in searching for answers to someone else's problems, in being answers to someone else's prayers, we may find what we so desperately look for. And meanwhile we walk tall. I am not Atlas, I do not bear the weight of the world on my shoulders. So I treat myself kindly, I've learnt to say no to commitments I feel are too much for me. I've learnt the beauty of delegation, and with that the grace to accept less than perfection, and appreciate honest effort. I've learnt that people are not donkeys, they don't need to be pushed to live. And I've learnt to allow people to be who they are, to be with who they want, and do what they feel is right for them at the time. Many lessons I have learnt not by my friends' nagging,but by my choosing my own path. I have learnt that true  friendship involves mastery of the art of silence. But I also learnt not to get less than I deserve. I learnt to politely but firmly refuse to be pushed and walked all over. I have come to admire the quiet dignity and gumption I see in my older friends, the boldness that makes my mum walk into a bank and demand from the manager what is rightfully hers, on a matter of principle. And I want that...


And I’ve learnt that it’s not that serious. If it is not about my God, then it just is not that serious. I’ve learnt not to break my back for things that will never truly satisfy. I’ve learnt not to worry about things I have no control over. I’ve learnt not to borrow from tomorrow its evil to mule over today. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. In less than one month I am going to be a Kenyan. My folks have this thing about how I should start making the transition from bread-eater to bread-earner, about sooner rather than later. So I thought about it, and about how I don’t see myself in a lab for the rest of my life, and how I don’t know where I’ll end up, and what if I don’t like it there, and why did I do biochemistry anyway… I thought about many things without answers, I talked to people who could only smile because they don’t know either, eventually it was too much. And the worries wouldn't stop piling on. I couldn’t focus on now worrying about tomorrow. A tomorrow I don’t even know I have, and you know what, it just is not that serious. When the time comes for me to sit and work through that, then I will. But I won’t borrow trouble from tomorrow as if I’ve got all of today’s sorted out. Give it Time, you never know what’s coming. Half of the things I worried about getting into campus never happened, and the ones that could have happened already did, and I’m still here. Nothing is ever that serious. Nothing is ever forever and thank the Lord that it’s not.

So I thank God for last year, I thank God for this new year. I’m 23 now, who knows what that holds... all I know is that I cannot wait to find out!!!.